President Donald Trump spoke by telephone with American astronauts aboard the International Space Station during a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. He praised them as pioneers, offered them time in the Oval Office after their return, and used the occasion to highlight wider US space and military-space initiatives.

The astronauts said they were conducting several spacewalks, with another planned for the following week. Earlier in the visit, Trump honoured the Artemis II crew with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and signed an executive order creating a US Space Force Academy, which he said would be comparable in status to other military academies.